[Week 2] – Brandon Mendoza’s Review

[ROM][5.1.1] Android Ice Cold Project – 9.0(June 8th Build)

Introduction:

Android Ice Cold Project or AICP is a ROM that I first discovered through a friend. He had told me about it and much like you, the reader, I had no clue what he was talking about. AICP’s goal is to be an All-One-ROM ,similarly to Resurrection Remix and PAC ROM, and provide a plethora of features and customization from different ROMs and converging them into one ROM on top of CyanogenMod 12.1. Thus, you can take advantage of all the different features from different ROMs without having to settle on a set of features.

I was pleasantly surprised and impressed when I first tried AICP and continue to feel the same this week when I flashed it on monday and began testing. First impressions are important, AICP leaves a spectacular impressions with it’s beautifully designed boot animation. Even the “Android is Starting” process is customized to display the AICP logo and different colors, the attention to detail leaves a great impression for a spectacular ROM with a fatal flaw.

UI Feel and Smoothness:

Upon setting up my google account and going through the Setup process I was sent to my home screen and immediately I felt the smoothness and responsiveness of the ROM. Scrolling, opening/closing apps, transitions and navigating around felt fluid. AICP has one of the snappiest UI’s that I have tested.

As previously mentioned, AICP is an All-In-One ROM with features from multiple ROMs. All of these features and customizations can be found under the settings, under “AICP Extras”. In the Extras Menu you are first presented with the developer’s sense of humor as the first category is “Various Shit”. Which includes miscellaneous settings and customizations. Furthermore, the Extras categories includes the ability to change the animations, the SlimPIE feature from SlimROMs, Gesture Anywhere which allows for the creation of custom gestures to open apps or for actions when you slide in from the left of the screen. The ROM also includes the App Circle Bar, which allows you to display app shortcuts when you slide in from the right edge of the screen. Additionally, AICP has a built in Wakelock Blocker, a built in AdBlocker and an OTA function.

Overall the UI and smoothness is great and responsive, when it works…. As mentioned earlier, AICP suffers one fatal flaw that would otherwise make it almost perfect. Bugs, bugs and more bugs. I have tried AICP multiple times throughout my flashing time, and every time I am left in awe by the amount of features and customization. And it seems that I keep running into the same bugs. Every form of video online doesn’t work. Instead, the video plays for a millisecond after which chrome and other apps don’t respond causing you to close chrome. No matter the amount of reboots that bug persists on different video sources and apps including Netflix. Most of the time this leads to the SystemUI crashing and restarting. There was also a point where the whole ROM crashed suddenly and it rebooted and had to re-initialize as if it were the first boot. These bugs while occurring when watching a video, with the exception of the random reboot, made my experience with AICP unenjoyable.

Battery Life:

First and foremost, let’s talk about my battery usage. I’m a heavy user and my usage includes constant Bluetooth connection to my Moto 360. My OPO is always connected to either WiFi or LTE Data, if not both and my usage consists of heavy web browsing and constant messaging. Finally, the only battery saving method I use is greenify and denying Google Play Services “Keep Awake” and “Wake Up”.The battery life on AICP is on par with that of the nightlies. I was getting as low as 4 hours of SoT to as high as 5 hours of SoT. On average I would get 4.5 hours of SoT, while nothing spectacular it is around the same battery life I was getting on the CM12.1 nightlies.

Overall Impressions:

AICP is one of those unique ROMs that provides a wide variety of features. During my usage of the ROM, I enjoyed the smoothness, the responsiveness and the overall experience that the ROM wants to deliver.Unfortunately, that great experience is interrupted with the constant SystemUI crashes caused by any sort of video media or app. The battery life is good, not great, but as good and on par with the nightlies. The amount of customization and features will make those who are keen on customizing to their heart’s content will make them happy. This ROM provides a great experience that is throttled and destroyed by those inescapable bugs and random crashes and unresponsiveness.

Conclusion:

AICP is a beautifully designed ROM with a lot of customization and features. Everything from the boot animation to the “Various Shit” is designed to provide a great experience. However, the experience is ruined by the bugs that plague the ROM. Bugs that I have encountered before in my other times of usage of AICP. If those bugs were sorted out the ROM would be near perfect. Thus, there is the love-hate relationship with this ROM. I love it so much but hate the bugs that prevent it from being enjoyable.

TL;DR:

A beautiful ROM with a lot of features and customization but there are random bugs and crashes that make the experience unenjoyable.

6 Comments

And you did it again, a very nice review Sir and I couldn´t agree more with it.I was on AICP a while back and really liked it but as you say the random bugs and crashes were annoying and made me jump ship after a couple of days.

weird thing about AICP is that if you turn on USB debugging, MTP doesn’t work within the ROM. Windows couldn’t detect my phone at all. I thought I had a faulty cable or bad drivers. I was like, “THEY BROKE USB” until someone on XDA suggested I turn USB debugging off. Voila, it worked.